The FBI said that they possess a report on former Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno which contains a number of threatening letters the coach received from a number of students, the FBI report does not mention his then assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, convicted sex-offender, in any of the 868 page report.
The report contains letters from disgruntled parents of students and some from students, but none of them mentioning anything relating to the Sandusky child-sex abuse scandal.
The report is available online since Wednesday on grounds of Freedom of Information Act requests from the media.
Paterno, the once celebrated football coach died in January from lung cancer at the age of 85 after he was forced to quit his job due to involvement in the cover-up scandal of Sandusky.
After 68-year-old Sandusky was found guilty on 45 counts of child-sex abuse and molestation in May, the FBI released a report that implicated top PSU officials, including Paterno, involved in covering up an incident involving Sandusky sexually abuse a boy while in the shower.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh released the report, which now takes on his name as the Freeh Report. The report released implicated PSU Head Coach Joe Paterno, Athletic Director Tim Curly, the University President Graham Spanier, and Vice President Gary Schultz in a cover-up of a 1998 shower incident in which the 68-year-old Sandusky was accused of showering with a boy and touching him inappropriately.
The 267 page report was formed over seven months of investigation, more than 400 interviews, and a review of over 3.5 million documents.
The Freeh report has certainly shed light on PSU's "pervasive and damaging culture at Penn State where the levers of power were tightly controlled by four men (the officials)... whose repeated failure to deal with troubling allegations lodged against Sandusky always seemed to be directed by one goal: to avoid the consequences of bad publicity," as mentioned by USA Today.
The most powerful PSU officials "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large," according to the New York Times.
In a book titled "Paterno," Joe Posnanski writes about Paterno's life from the early years to his rise as the celebrated football coach of PSU and his fall in the last months of life due to the implications of the cover-up in the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse case.
The author explores the incident revolving around Mike McQueary's testimony in court, McQueary, admitted that he had approached the coach in his house to inform him that he had witnessed Sandusky in the shower with a boy and that he sensed something unusually inappropriate.
However, Paterno had denied all accusations that he knew anything of the situation. Even in his last months before he died of lung cancer in January 2012, Paterno denied any knowledge. In the book, Posnanski writes about a conversation Paterno had with his son Jay Paterno on the subject, "I didn't hear anything," Paterno says "Why are you badgering me? What do I know about Jerry Sandusky? I've got Nebraska to think about. I can't worry about this," as reported by philly.com
Paterno took the information up to the athletic head and president (Tim Curly and Graham Spanier respectively), emails revealed in the Freeh report showed that Paterno did not want matters taken to authorities.
In the book, Paterno expresses remorse to the author, "I did what I thought was the right thing" to which Posnanski tells Paterno 'You are Joe Paterno. Right or wrong, people expect more from you," according to Philly.com
Paterno's response "I wish I had done more."
